Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/213

Rh flesh and blood of his foe. Enough more will needs be said or recognized in pages yet to follow, in the various divisions of our subject, to keep in our minds these repulsive qualities of the Indian as a fighter. In general it is to be said, that, apart from those qualities as a torturer and a cannibal, — which are simply inherent in full barbarism, — the savage Indian, like the civilized white man, uses against an enemy, in warfare, all the arts and implements — the guile, the ambush, the stratagem, the surprise, the deceit, the weapons, and the flames — which he can put to his service. Lacking the steel sword, knife, and bayonet, the pistol, firelock, and cannon, the armor, the horse, and the bloodhound, of the European, his armory was drawn from the stones, the flint-barbed arrow and spear, occasionally tipped with poison, the sharp fish-bone, the tomahawk, and the war-club. He did the best he could under the circumstances. The “calumet,” first mentioned under this Indian name by De Soto, is familiar to us as the emblem of peace when smoked and passed from hand to hand in an interview or council. This pipe was often lavishly ornamented.

There is occasion here, in connection with the relation of the other incidents and elements of savage life, to note not so much the methods as the customs of the savage tribes in preparation for and in the return from their fields of blood. The savage, in all the northern parts of our continent, was and is a born fighter. A state of warfare is his chronic condition. So far as it relieves the burden of reproach on the white man in his long and generally, but not always, prevailing conflict with the savages, — and the relief is a considerable and a serious one, — we have to emphasize the fact that the Indians have been each others' most virulent and fatal foes. They were found to be fighting each other when the white man came among them; and each and all the tribes, as one by one they have been brought into communication, had stories to tell